Events

Hungry Ghost Festival 2017

Just as the Americans have Halloween, the Chinese have the Hungry Ghost Festival (also known as Zhong Yuan Jie in Chinese), when the souls of the dead are believed to roam the earth.

According to custom, these ghosts can get up to mischief if ignored so all sorts of offerings are made during this period, which is the seventh month in the lunar calendar.

A mainstay of the festival is the 'getai' performance, thrown as a popular mode of entertainment for the wandering spirits. But 'getai' today is a very different animal – jazzed up with snazzy LED panel lit stages. Young, sexy perfomers sing not just traditional songs in dialect but thumping techno versions of English and Mandarin pop ditties. It appears that even the tastes of the spiritual world are moving with the times. (From Singapore Tourism Board website)